High-Stakes Bachelor
Page 25
But she was a mother. She wouldn’t let him intimidate her. Not when her kid was crying against her shoulder.
“My name’s Dylan, ma’am,” the man said. “Dylan Rooney. And I’m not here about your neighbor. I was riding the ridge, uh, bird-watching, and I saw the kid playing with his BB gun. Next thing I knew I heard him screaming and running to the house. I figured something had happened and came down the hill to help. Kid—” he directed his statement to Peter, who’d raised his tear-streaked face away from her shoulder “—are you hurt?”
Peter pulled away from Rachel and swiped futilely at the tears that kept streaming down his face. “No, it’s not me. It’s...it’s...” Anguish froze his expression, his mouth gaping and open, shutting off whatever he’d been about to say.
Rachel reached for him, but Peter took another step away from her. The distance, a mere two inches, ripped yet another hole in Rachel’s heart. He’d needed her—and then he hadn’t. She couldn’t help thinking of all the family she’d lost—her parents and even her brother in a way. She swallowed the lump of emotional pain down and said, “I heard you ask for my help, Peter. What’s wrong?”
The man—Dylan—came forward and placed a solid hand on Peter’s shoulder. Somehow the masculine grip held Peter together in a way Rachel’s soft hold hadn’t, because Peter took a shaky breath and the tears stopped flowing.
“It’s Josiah...”
Josiah. Her ranch hand. And friend. A sensation like a cold hand slid up her back. Twenty minutes ago she’d checked in on him as he repaired the fence on the property line she shared with Aaron Jacobson. Had Aaron gone too far this time? Was Aaron causing Josiah trouble?
Her neighbor had been a real pain in the neck ever since he discovered a natural spring right on her side of the fence line a couple of years ago. He’d been digging around the courthouse records, trying to prove the spring was actually on his own land. She’d been too preoccupied with running the ranch, keeping Peter in line and working on the appeal process for her brother to deal with Aaron’s constant haranguing, but she’d finally referred him to Julia Rickel, her friend and lawyer, who’d threatened lawsuits and police action and whatnot if Aaron didn’t back off. Aaron had made it clear he hadn’t liked what he considered to be Julia’s threats.
She opened her mouth to speak, but the stranger beat her to the question she was about to ask.
“Kid,” Dylan said, “what happened? Where’s Josiah?”
Peter hitched a breath and pointed back to the fence line. “He’s over there. B-b-but it’s too late. We’re too late.”
The cold hand on Rachel’s back now gripped her throat. No.
“Too late for what, Peter?” she whispered.
“Too late to help. Josiah’s dead.”
Copyright © 2014 by Virna dePaul
ISBN-13: 9781460342145
High-Stakes Bachelor
Copyright © 2014 by Cynthia Dees
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